The Return of 40 Man Raiding

[Destinas]

I wouldn't participate in a 40 man raid. I hated doing AQ 40 and such back in the day. It would be largely ignored, I would guess. Too much lag, too much loot competition.

[Duronos]

40 man raids were fun because they were unbalanced, the entire game back then was unbalanced and it had a certain charm to it. Now the game has changed (in my personal opinion for the worst) and 40 mans would no longer work though who's to say if given a shot they may, can't know until tested.

[Gaman]

Dont see why they cant make the flexible size, that in WoD is Normal and Heroic scale from 10m to 40m, instead of 10m to 25m(30m?) as it is now. Other than that, I dont want it back. Mythic going 20m is a godsend, makes having stuff like magetank a thing, like on High King Maulgar and Kael'Thas.

[TheWindWalker]

Since this topic needs some refreshing material, here's a thought:

Remember how Spoils works? What if you had two 20 man raids that had to enter from two different sides and fight identical bosses that would retreat and swap out with each other and shared HP (like Omnitron, but with a wall inbetween with teams on either side) and the separator was around 100 yards so the effects were more-or-less ignored by the clients of the opposing side?


Boss A and Boss B could have very different mechanics and both sides be a DPS check as they'd be single-tanked with a stacking debuff that only wears off on the swap. Four tanking it would risk pushing the enrage timer (new vengeance, not current) and perhaps additional mechanics like buttons on the wall that have to be DPS'd in the right order to force the swap but doing it too early or often could cause a problem because, oh I don't know, they regain 10% hp each time they swap.

[Durantye]

It will never come back thank god, 40-man would break computers especially with all the new models and graphics we have these days spell effects and having actual mechanics in raids. Plus 25-man is frustrating enough as it is when 4 of the people die to something so simple. Now 10 people will die everytime a single fire area goes on the ground? No thanks, if they ever did make 40-man a legit experience more power to them, if they ever made achievements, gear, or items specifically for 40-man I would quit.

[Ronduwil]

I would ignore it. I'll tell you what. See how it does when WildStar releases and then we can all post a little more intelligently about its feasibility in WoW. Honestly, if it had worked well they would have kept it.

- - - Updated - - -

Since this topic needs some refreshing material, here's a thought:

Remember how Spoils works? What if you had two 20 man raids that had to enter from two different sides and fight identical bosses that would retreat and swap out with each other and shared HP (like Omnitron, but with a wall inbetween with teams on either side) and the separator was around 100 yards so the effects were more-or-less ignored by the clients of the opposing side?

This is pretty much what WildStar said they're going to do. My problem with that is that you essentially have two separate 20 man raids, and if the other fails (due to circumstances over which you have no control whatsoever) your raid fails too. Is that fun for you? It's not fun for me. It's frustrating in Spoils too, but at least that's only one of the four fights in that wing (or one out of sixteen fights in the raid, if you prefer to see it that way).

[bruggles]

40 Man raiding & The obliteration of add-ons are the two things that together would get me to come back to the game heh. Man do I miss vanilla wow days.

[Halicia]

Didnt they say something to the effect of 30man Flex (Normal) Raids in the expansion to offset the inconvenience to 25man raiding guilds ?

[Griffter]

I think it would be a fun novelty thing to have an optional 40-man side boss that dropped cosmetic stuff or something, but I wouldn't want to have any 40-man raiding as part of normal progression. It's just too chaotic, hard to organize, and laggy.

[Denkou]

well last i heard they were trying to make it so you only saw your spell effects and animations. to lessen the lag

Oh god, this please. T15 had so much lightning flashing everywhere that it made the game very difficult to play.

[Airwaves]

God I hope not. Getting 40 people together and on time was just a massive pain in the arse.

[AestostheInsane]

God I hope not. Getting 40 people together and on time was just a massive pain in the arse.

I'm not picking on Airwaves here, they were just the most recent quote... but, I doubt anybody saying getting 40 people together was a pain in the ass, actually did much 40 man raiding... truthfully the only restraint is new spell effects/graphics and a bad lag problem, otherwise... getting groups together and co-ordination was a TON easier... mind you when 40 man raiding was all we had, every Tom, Dick and Harry didn't THINK they could run their own guild... it would cause problems now, but back then there were bigger guilds and far LESS guilds than there are now because everyone knew it took 40 to raid... likewise there was class leads then which made co-ordination simpler as well as you could delegate duties without actually having to micro-manage the entire raid yourself as a GM.

JTMC

side note: we had a rule, you were there 15-minutes pre-raid or you didn't go... and there was ALWAYS someone waiting to fill your spot... honestly that's the biggest thing I miss about old school raids... I never had to wait 15-20 minutes past raid for someone to login late... super pet peeve of mine...

[Denkou]

I'm not picking on Airwaves here, they were just the most recent quote... but, I doubt anybody saying getting 40 people together was a pain in the ass, actually did much 40 man raiding... truthfully the only restraint is new spell effects/graphics and a bad lag problem, otherwise... getting groups together and co-ordination was a TON easier... mind you when 40 man raiding was all we had, every Tom, Dick and Harry didn't THINK they could run their own guild... it would cause problems now, but back then there were bigger guilds and far LESS guilds than there are now because everyone knew it took 40 to raid... likewise there was class leads then which made co-ordination simpler as well as you could delegate duties without actually having to micro-manage the entire raid yourself as a GM.

JTMC

side note: we had a rule, you were there 15-minutes pre-raid or you didn't go... and there was ALWAYS someone waiting to fill your spot... honestly that's the biggest thing I miss about old school raids... I never had to wait 15-20 minutes past raid for someone to login late... super pet peeve of mine...

Yeah, I remember guilds had HUNDREDS of players and there were always people wanting to raid. It was super epic-feeling. I remember being a benchwarmer for the first guild I was in and one night they were short a person and I was insanely happy just to get into the raid and earn some DKP. Back then guilds were pretty serious business and some of the funnest memories I have of this game were from logging on early to head out to Kargath and just dicking around with other guildmates while we waited for the rest of the raid to get online.

Nostalgia aside, I don't think having 40-man raids again would work out well, but getting 40 people online was usually not a big issue back then. It might be now, since people are used to much smaller raid sizes, but like others have said, I think lag and graphic/spell effect limitations are bigger issues than finding enough people.

[Tenjen]

most of we the diffuclty my guild had in vanilla was getting 40 people on and prepared. It would take a huge amount of time, even with preparation, to get ready and raiding. Count on 40 people not to be late, to come to the portal, to be ready, to coordinate and communicate. Trying to discern where things went wrong. the likelihood of deadly mistakes increasing when you had 40 people capable of doing them.

When the fights and mechanics of a raid take a back seat in difficulty to trying to guide your raid, you know the system is bull.

not to mention that in those days spamming the same ability or two or some classes who were only there to rebuff or white hit existed. Boss spells were simply compared to today (except naxx and to a point, AQ, which was the forefather and prototype (respectively) of future raid mechanics but still werent as complex as today)

how do you set up a 40 man today with the complexity and coordination of todays boss abilities and class roles/cycles?

[Deleted]

From a player that started playing in ICC times, why would it lag more now than it dit in vanilla? I mean computer hardware is alot better now than then. Just curious!

[Sierra85]

It would be cool if Flexi could scale to 40.

From a player that started playing in ICC times, why would it lag more now than it dit in vanilla? I mean computer hardware is alot better now than then. Just curious!

spell effects on the ground + smart heals + procs on pull = lag times. Even in 25man raiding guilds today this happens.

[Deleted]

I do play since the end of wow vanilla and i'd trully look forward 40 players raids. That is, if the game can handle it.

Indeed, before the 3.0 update there were fewer mobility spells, AOE spells, instant and the cycles of the classes were much more simple than what we have now. Additionally, boss scripts are much more complex nowadays. So I don't really think the game as it is now could handle 40 man raids.

However, gathering enough players for this size of raid isn't the issue as in MMORPG guilds size tends to be a function of the required amount of players for a given content. Indeed, in games like Eve online (where pvp raids of hundreds of players can occur) you can find guilds which number of players amount to thousands.

The question is, did you know anyone? Nobody I know who raided 40 mans didn't like it, and everyone I know who raided 40 mans was royally pissed off when they removed them from the game.

Actually, people who truly enjoyed 40 man raiding (and were pissed off by the downsize of BC) aren't likely to be currently playing the current wow (on official servers).

[Deleted]

Doesn't wildstar come with 40 mans or at least a 40-man? If a) the game is popular and b) 40-mans in that game are popular, I wouldn't be surprised if other MMOs follow the trend. a) and b) happening is probably less likely than c) we all being abducted by aliens; but yeah this forum's esteemed audience will certainly be watching that game with bated breath.

[shoc]

Doesn't wildstar come with 40 mans or at least a 40-man? If a) the game is popular and b) 40-mans in that game are popular, I wouldn't be surprised if other MMOs follow the trend. a) and b) happening is probably less likely than c) we all being abducted by aliens; but yeah this forum's esteemed audience will certainly be watching that game with bated breath.

WildStar is offering 40man and 20man raiding AFAIK, if 40 man in WildStar takes off (which I think is unlikely) then I could see WoW expanding its flex to accommodate 40 players.